My son has struggled and repeated one year since he started school. I was one of those parents, and some teachers as well, that kept saying “try harder, don’t be so lazy.” His learning support teacher would not give up and part of me would not believe (or face) that maybe he was dyslexic. He just didn’t fit the symptoms. After some research, I came across the Irlen Diagnostic web site. He fitted their checklist to a T. Long story short; some believe and some say it is BS; he was tested and it turned out that with coloured lenses and overlays he was able to read without difficulty; he has improved dramatically in school. I will never forget the joy on his face when he first clearly read out a difficult passage without hesitation. So don’t write your kids off; this is more common than you think.

I think that we have all had some experience with bullying at some stage. Whether it be with ourselves when we were little or with our own kids. It’s something that should be taken seriously and should not be tolerated in our society. Trinidad Hunt has a wonderful activity you could use with your class about how to choose friends. I’ve pasted it on my blog as I feel it would be such a wonderful activity for you to do with your own children or if you are a teacher, do it with your class. Perhaps it could provide some inspiration for us as adults to take a look at those friends who are ‘poisonous’ to us. Let me know what you think.

This is the classroom activity that I designed, you can do the same with your class:

Divide the class into teams of 4 or 5.

Hand each team a large sheet of butcher or poster paper and a set of poster pens.

Ask each team to draw a line down the middle of the sheet.

Title the left column: Fake Friends

Title the right column: Real Friends

Ask the students to list the things makes a Fake Friend or a Real Friend

Give the teams 12-15 minutes to fill their charts in.

Have each team share their charts. Based on the following guidelines.

Everyone must share something.

One person introduces each member of the team.

One person shares the process they went through to complete their discussion and the chart.

Two or three students share the material.

One person ‘wraps’ or reviews and ties together the presentation to close.

Close with a full room discussion on recognizing the difference between fake friends and real friends in real life and surrounding yourself with real friends.

I have some exciting news in regard to Irlen Syndrome. For those of you who don’t know about Irlen, stay tuned , as I will post more information about what it is etc later. But for now, the newsflash is Stuart Ritchie, Psychology Department, The University of Edinburgh, has notified us that a chapter on dyslexia in an edited volume by the University of Edinburgh’s Sergio Della Sala entitled “Neuroscience in Education,” to be published in 2011 by Oxford University Press, will talk about Coloured Lenses and the Irlen Treatment.